Keogh's heavy haulage

Quite a while back I worked with a ripper bloke who has sadly passed on called Timmy Keogh. He told us all sorts of stories about the jobs he did with his dad Pat of I guess was Keogh Transport in Melbourne.
Have any of you guys got any photo's of their gear or know of the crew.
He used to speak of a Scammel they had, an Atkinson and a Leyland Hippo early on.

G`Day Gentlemen

Keoghs were very active in the 70`s -80`s with a Scammell--- they moved the dockside cranes from Victoria to Garden Island Naval base in WA --I got stuck behind them a couple of times across the Nullarbour--- When the road was a very narrow bitumen strip and the edges were soft after rain--and too dangerous to pull off on.

They used to turn off Great Eastern Hwy at Merriden and head through Bruce Rock and York to avoid the bridge at Northam.There was a Leyland travelling backup truck on these runs.
I did hear in later years that they had either broken one of the bridges in Melboune over the Yarra or had discovered that it was broken.

I would think Swishy would be able to tell more about them

OLDBOB70

Yes Bob, he told me about dropping the Kings street bridge.

I think the Scammel was an 8 wheeler, he had a brag book with some photo's I once saw of it. Timmy told me they put a 671 in it, "it would do 1/2 a mile an hour at full revs and 36mph flat out" he'd say.

He told me a storey about taking a vessel up to Darwin and apparently if the Hippo spent to long going slow the worm & wheel in the rear end would run dry. It did this on one of the creek crossings so they set up camp, pulled her apart and waited for someone to head the other way. Eventually another truck came by so Tim gave the fella a letter to send to his dad explaining what had happened and the parts and gear they needed. A couple of weeks later the parts arrived but the problem was the worm or maybe it was the wheel was an interferance fit. So they got a roaring fire going , heated her up and dropped it on. "We only had one shot" he'd say. They buttoned it up and off they went.
Not sure how much was fact but it sure made a ripper story.

52 years ago tomorrow 10th July 1962 the king st bridge collapsed when a a Low Loader with a load of 28ton crossed the bridge when it collapsed

me thort it twaz a Walter Wright Low Loader driven By Ray Noble

Keoghs Nephew is Kevin Cahill www.heavyhaulage.com.au/

https://encrypted-tbn2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSqMNmT-P9L6fqWulVjKIerct3_C9VtOigmSOSrT4X_Fdk2_AdP

But then again

Wot wood eye kno

LOL
cya

Keogh bought that 8 wheel Scammel 2nd hand - but still fairly new. Was intitially a body truck on cattle road train work out of Mt Isa (Cant recall the owners name).

It was more time broken down than going - so he handed it back to the Dealer. I think he replaced it with an Ergo Cab AEC.

Hence the long wheel base - unusual for Keoghs type of work. Seems he got a good run out of it.

Oldfulla

Further to Oldfulla's post about a Mount Isa Scammell, it could well be this one (pic pinched from Old Lorries Blog for research purposes). That's a Queensland dealer plate hanging off the bulbar...

Horder

Thats the beast. Check out the bumper part of the bull bar. Its made of 2 sections butted together (vertically) - so - imagine the actuall bull bat bits removed - and the bumper section is the same as when Keogh had it.

Oldfulla

The truck didn't break the bridge coz it was already broken. According to the gurus, the bridge, designed by Utah Australia, had a lot of welding defects coz the fabrication company (Johns & Waygood ????) were not familiar with welding low alloy steel. The welding faults, combined with the low ambient temperature (14 C), 11:00am on 10th July 1962, caused one section to buckle when a load of about 47 ton went over it. The load was way below the calculated maximum load for the bridge. Apparently Zig and Zag had a fair bit to say about it, and even Spike Milligan got in on the act. Dunno what company's truck it was though.